Man and the World of Stars

Schmidt Number: S-5088

On-line since: 15th March, 2017

III

Man's Relation to the World of the Stars.

Dornach, December 3, 1922

IN the course of our present studies I should like it to
become increasingly clear that man does not belong to the Earth
alone, to Earth-existence alone, but also to the Cosmos, to the
world of Stars. Much of what there is to say in this connection
I have, as you know, already said. I want now to begin with a
brief remark in order that misunderstandings may be
avoided.

Anyone who speaks of man's connection with the world of the
Stars is probably always liable to be accused of leanings
towards the superficial form of Astrology that is so widely
pursued nowadays. But if what is said on this subject is
rightly understood, the immense difference will at once be
apparent between what is meant here and the amateurish
interpretations of ancient astrological traditions that are so
common today.

When we say that man, between birth and death, is a being
connected with the Earth and earthly happenings, what do we
mean by this? We mean that man owes his existence between birth
and death to the fact that, in the first place, he takes the
substances of the Earth into his metabolic system as
nourishment and digests them; further, that through his
breathing, and through the inner processes connected with his
breathing, he is related in still another way to the Earth
— that is to say, to the atmosphere surrounding the the
Earth. We also say that man perceives the outer things of the
Earth by means of his senses, perceives indeed reflections of
what is extra-terrestrial — reflections which are,
however, of a much more earthly character than is generally
supposed. So that in general one can say: Man partakes of
earthly existence through his senses, through his rhythmic
system, and through his metabolic system, and has within him
the continuation of the processes set in operation through this
Earth-existence itself.

But
equally there takes place in man a continuation of cosmic,
extra-terrestrial processes. Only it must not be supposed, when
it is said that an influence from the Moon, or Venus, or Mars,
is exercised upon man, that this is to be understood merely as
if rays of light are sent down from Mars or Venus or the Moon,
and permeate him. When, for instance, it is said that man is
subject to the influence of the Moon, this must be taken as an
analogy of what is meant by saying that man is subject to the
influences of the substances of the Earth. When someone passes
an apple-tree, let us say, picks an apple and eats it, it can
be said that the apple-tree has an influence on him; but we
should not construe this so literally as to say that the
apple-tree had sent its rays towards him. Or, if you like, when
a man passes a meadow where there is an ox, and a week
afterwards eats its flesh, we shall not at once form the idea
that the ox has exercised an influence upon him. Neither must
we picture so literally what is said about the influence upon
man of the world of the Stars. The relation of the world of the
Stars to man and of man to the world of the Stars is for all
that just as much a reality as the relation of the man to the
ox he passes in the meadow and the flesh of which he afterwards
eats.

Today I have to speak of certain connections which exist
between man and the worlds both of Earth-existence and of
extra-earthly existence. If we again turn our attention to how
man lives in the alternating conditions of waking and sleeping,
we must first be clear that it is in the waking state that his
reciprocal relationship to earthly substances and earthly
forces is actually established. During waking life he perceives
through his senses; during sleep he does not. Moreover he eats
and drinks only when awake — though possibly some people
would like to do so in sleep as well! The breathing process and
the process that is connected with the breathing, i.e. the
circulation of the blood, as well as the other rhythmic
processes — these alone continue in man both in the
waking and sleeping states. But they differ in the two states.
I will speak later of the difference there is between breathing
during waking life and breathing during sleep. To begin with we
will confine ourselves to the fact that man is related to the
outer world during the waking state through his senses and
through his metabolism. We will consider this at first in
connection only with things that are common knowledge.

Let
us then start from the fact that during his waking state man
takes foodstuffs into himself from the outside world, inner
activity being promoted by the process of digestion. But it
must not be forgotten that while, in the waking state, after
the food has been taken, inner physical and etheric activity
proceeds under the influence of the intaken foodstuffs, this
physical and etheric organism of man is permeated by his
Ego-organization and astral body.

It
is also the case that during the waking state, man's Ego and
astral ‘being’ take command of what goes on in the physical and
etheric bodies in connection with the process of nourishment.
But what thus takes place under the influence of the Ego and
astral being does not continue during sleep. During sleep the
physical and etheric bodies of man are worked upon by forces
that issue, not from the Earth but from the cosmic environment
of the Earth — from the world of the Stars.

It
might be said — and not in a figurative sense for it has
real meaning — that by day man eats the substances of the
Earth and by night takes into himself what the Stars and their
activities give him. In a certain sense, therefore, man is
bound up with the Earth while he is awake and removed from the
Earth while he is asleep; heavenly processes take their course
in his physical and etheric bodies during sleep.

Materialistic science thinks that when a man is asleep, the
substances he has consumed simply activate their own forces in
him, whereas in reality, whatever substances a man takes into
himself are worked upon during his sleep by the cosmic forces
in the environment of the Earth. Suppose, for instance, we
consume white of egg — albumen. This albumen is only
fettered to the Earth through the fact that during the waking
state we are permeated by our soul and spirit — our
astral body and Ego. During sleep this albumen is worked upon
by the whole planetary system from Moon to Saturn, and by the
world of the fixed Stars. And a chemist who wished to study the
inner processes taking place in man during sleep would have not
only to be versed in earthly chemistry but also in a spiritual
chemistry, for the processes then are different from those that
take their course during waking life.

The
Ego and astral being of man are, as you know, separated from
the physical and etheric bodies during sleep and are not
directly related with the world of the Stars; but they
are directly related with the Beings of whom the Sun,
Moon and Stars are the physical mirror-images — namely,
with the Beings of the Hierarchies. Man asleep is a duality;
his Ego and astral body — I could equally well say, his
spirit and soul — become subject to the spiritual Beings
of the higher kingdoms of the Universe. His bodies, the
physical and etheric bodies, are subject to the physical
reflections, the cosmic-physical mirror-images of these higher
Beings.

Aware of himself as an earthly being, man has become more and
more a materialistic philistine under the influence of
intellectualism. Almost as aptly as the modern age is called
the epoch of intellectual and scientific progress, it could be
called the epoch of materialistic philistinism. For man is not
conscious that he is dependent on anything else than
sense-impressions coming from the Earth, the rhythmic processes
set going in him by earthly processes, the metabolic processes
also occasioned in him by earthly conditions. Hence he does not
know his real place in the Universe. The factors in operation
here are of tremendous complexity. As soon as the veil that is
spread before man in order that he may see only the sense-world
and not the spiritual world behind it, is drawn aside, life
becomes extraordinarily complex.

It
is found to begin with that man is influenced not only by those
Beings and their physical reflections, the Stars, which can be
directly observed, but that within earthly existence itself,
supersensible Beings akin to those of the world of Stars have
so to speak set up their abode in the earthly realm.

You
know that the people of the Old Testament worshipped Jehovah
— who was an actual Being, connected with what manifests
in the physical world as Moon. It is of course more or less a
figure of speech to say that the Jehovah-Being has his dwelling
in the Moon, but at the same time there is reality in the
expression. Everything pertaining to this Jehovah-Being is
connected with the Moon.

Now
there are Beings who ‘scorned’ — if I may so express it
— to make the journey to the Moon with the Jehovah-beings
when the Moon separated from the Earth, and who remained in the
earthly realm. So that in a way we can divine the existence of
the true Jehovah-beings when we look at the Moon. We can say:
that is the outer physical image of everything that
participates in a regular way in the World Order in connection
with the Being known as Jehovah. But when we learn to know what
takes place inside the surface of the Earth — whether in
the solid or the watery states — we find beings there who
have disdained to make their home on the Moon, and have in an
irregular way made the Earth their dwelling-place.

Now
the Moon-beings, as I will call them, have helpers. These
helpers belong to Mercury and Venus, just as the Moon-beings
belong to the Moon. The Venus-beings, the Mercury-beings and
the Moon-beings form a kind of trinity. The so-called regular
beings of this kind in the Universe belong to these Stars. But
both in the solid and the watery constituents of the Earth, we
find beings belonging, it is true, to the same category, but
— one might say — to a different epoch of time.
They are beings who did not share in the Earth's cosmic
evolution.

These beings have an influence upon sleeping man just as the
regular cosmic beings have; but their influence is pernicious.
I must characterize it by saying: when a man goes to sleep,
then in the condition between falling asleep and waking, these
irregular Moon, Venus and Mercury-beings approach him and set
about persuading him that evil is good and good evil. All this
takes place in man's unconscious condition, between going to
sleep and waking.

It
is a shattering experience connected with initiation that
beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness things by no
means without danger to humanity are encountered. People
holding the materialistic view of life have no idea to what man
is exposed between going to sleep and waking. He is actually
exposed to these beings who persuade him in his sleeping state
that good is evil, and evil good. The moral order on Earth is
bound up with the human etheric body, and when man sleeps, he
leaves his moral achievements behind him on the bed. He does
not pass over into the state of sleep armed with his moral
qualities.

Natural Science today is everywhere touching the fringe of
things which need to be explained by Spiritual Science. You may
recently have seen in the newspapers some interesting and
thoroughly well-founded statistics. It was stated that
criminals in the prisons have been found to have the soundest
sleep of all. Really hardened criminals are never tormented
during their sleep by bad dreams or the like. This only happens
when they dip down again into their etheric bodies, for it is
there that the moral qualities lie. It can much more easily
happen to one who is striving to be moral, that through the
constitution of his etheric body, he carries over something
into his astral body and is then tormented by dreams as the
result of comparatively trifling moral lapses. But generally
speaking it is a fact that man does not carry over at all, or
only to a very slight extent, the moral constitution he
acquires during earthly existence but is exposed during sleep
to the beings just referred to.

These beings are identical with those I have always designated
as Ahrimanic. They set themselves the task of keeping man on
the Earth by every possible means. You know from the book
Occult Science that the Earth will one day pass over
into the Jupiter condition. That is what these beings want to
prevent. They want to prevent man from developing in a regular
way together with the Earth and then passing over into the
Jupiter condition in a normal way. They want to preserve the
Earth as Earth and mankind for the Earth. Hence these
beings work unceasingly and with great intensity to achieve the
following. — You must remember that these are things that
take place behind the scenes of existence — real
processes that have been going on ever since there has been a
human race on the Earth. — Man passes into the state of
sleep in his Ego-being and astral-being. These Moon, Venus and
Mercury-beings who are living unlawfully on the Earth, now
endeavor to give man an etheric body composed of the Earth's
ether whenever he is asleep. They hardly ever succeed. In rare
cases of which I will speak at some later time, they have
succeeded; but this hardly ever happens. Still they do not give
up the attempt for over and over again it seems to them that
their efforts might succeed, that they might surround, permeate
a man while he is asleep and has left his etheric body behind,
with another etheric body built up from the Earth's ether. That
is what these beings desire.

If
an Ahrimanic being of this category were actually to succeed in
bringing a complete etheric body stage by stage into a man
every time he slept, such a man would be able after death, when
living in his etheric body, to maintain himself in that body.
Otherwise, as you know, the etheric body dissolves in a few
days. But a man to whom the above had happened would be able to
continue existing in his etheric body and after a time there
would arise a race of etheric humanity. That is what is desired
from this side of the spiritual world, and then it would be
possible by such means to preserve the Earth.

Within the solid and the fluid components of the Earth there
are in very truth a host of such beings. Their desire is to
make mankind into pure phantoms, etheric phantoms, until the
end of the Earth's evolution, so that the normal goal of
Earth-evolution could not be attained. And in the night-time
these beings by no means lose courage; over and over again they
believe that their efforts may succeed.

Now
man today has quite a passably good intellect which has
developed considerably at the present time when philistinism is
on the increase. Man can certainly pride himself upon
possessing intellect. But this intellect is not even remotely
on a par with the intellect of those higher beings who desire
to achieve what I am now describing to you. Let nobody say:
‘These beings must be fearfully stupid.’ They are certainly not
stupid. Seeing that they work only upon human beings in sleep,
there is nothing to deter them from believing that they might
succeed before the end of Earth-evolution in preventing a large
portion of the human race from reaching their future
destinations — destinations bound up with the Jupiter
embodiment of the Earth.

But
one who is able to see behind the scenes of physical existence
can perceive that these beings do sometimes lose courage, are
disappointed. And the disappointments they experience are not
experienced in the night, but by day. One sees, for instance,
how these Ahrimanic beings suffer disappointments if one comes
across them in hospitals.

Now
of course the illnesses that befall men have one aspect that
calls upon us in all circumstances to do everything we possibly
can to heal them. But on the other side we must ask: how do the
illnesses suffered by men arise out of the dark sources of
natural existence?

Those illnesses which are not the result of external influences
but arise out of the inner constitution of man, are connected
with the fact that when the Ahrimanic beings have almost
succeeded in making a man assume an etheric body that is not
his normal one, then, instead of bringing the lawful working of
the etheric forces into his physical body and into his own
accustomed etheric body on waking, such a man bears into
himself causes of illness. Through these causes of illness the
true Venus, Mercury and Moon-beings protect themselves against
the harmful influences of the irregular beings. Indeed if a man
did not at some time or another get this or that illness, he
would be liable to the danger of which I have just spoken. In
any illness his body breaks down, collapses, in order that
there can be ‘sweated out,’ if I may use the expression,
whatever irregular etheric processes he has taken into himself
through the Ahrimanic influences.

And
a further reaction called forth in order to prevent man from
falling a victim to this Ahrimanic influence, is the
possibility of error. And a third thing is
egoism. Man is not fundamentally intended to be ill, to
fall a prey to error, or to be egoistic to an exaggerated
degree. Egoism as such is again a means of holding man to the
evolution proper to the Earth instead of being torn out of it
by the Ahrimanic beings. This, then, is one order of beings
which can be discovered behind the scenes of ordinary
sense-existence.

One
can form an idea of another order of beings by knowing that not
only Moon, Mercury, and Venus have an influence upon man but
that an influence is also exercised from beyond the Sun —
from Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

You
know from the lectures I gave in the so-called ‘French
Course’* that the Moon is
the physical reflection of those beings who bring man into the
physical world. Saturn is the physical reflection of those
beings who bear him again out of the physical world. The Moon
draws man down to the Earth; Saturn draws him again into the
Universe and then into the spiritual world.

Just as the Jehovah-Moon-God has Venus and Mercury-beings as
helpers, so Saturn has Jupiter and Mars-beings as helpers in
bearing man into the Cosmos and into the spiritual worlds.
These influences and the influences connected with the
Moon-beings work upon man in exactly the opposite way.

The
influences of Moon, Venus, and Mercury upon us are predominant
until our 17th or 18th years. Then later on, when we have
passed our 20th or 21st year, an influence from Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn becomes particularly active; only in later years
does this come to the point of leading us out of earthly
existence into the spiritual world. The inner constitution of
man is, in fact, dependent upon this transition, as one might
say, from the inner planets to the outer planets. Until our
17th or 18th years, we are dependent, for instance, upon the
major blood-circulation which affects the whole body. Later in
life we are dependent upon the minor blood-circulation —
but these are matters which must be left for future lectures.
At the moment we must pay attention to the fact that just as
the irregular beings of Moon, Venus, and Mercury have their
habitations in the solid and fluidic components of the Earth,
so the irregular beings of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn have the
conditions for their existence — or, to speak
pictorially, their habitations — in the warmth and in the
air surrounding the Earth.

These beings have a great influence upon man during his
sleeping state. But their influence works in exactly the
opposite direction. The aim of these beings is to make
man into a moral automaton — if I may so express
it — into a moral automaton of such a nature that in his
waking state he would not listen to his own instincts, his
desires, or the voice of his blood, but would spurn all this
and hearken only to the inspiration of these irregular Mars-,
Jupiter-, and Saturn-beings. He would then become a moral
automaton, without any prospect of a future state of freedom.
That, then, is what these beings desire; and their influence
too is strong, exceedingly strong. It is they who every night
want to induce man to take the influence of the world of Stars
into himself and never again the influence of the Earth. They
would fain carry man right away from earthly existence. They
desire — and have desired this ever since the human race
first arose on the Earth — that man shall spurn the
Earth, that he shall not awaken to freedom on the Earth —
where alone this is possible. They desire that he shall remain
a moral automaton as he was in the preceding metamorphosis of
the Earth, in the Old Moon.

And
in the middle, between these two hosts, of which the one sets
its camp in the element of warmth and that of air, and the
other in the elements of earth and of water — between
these two opposing cosmic hosts stands Man. Life in his
physical body conceals from him the fact that a fierce battle
is waged in the Cosmos for possession of his being.

Today man must consciously find his way to such knowledge for
it concerns him deeply and essentially. His very existence as a
human being is constituted by the fact that forces are
everywhere active around him, forces from the spiritual world.
It is important for man today to have knowledge of his real
position in the Universe.

A
time will come when people will be far more justified in
holding a poor opinion of our dark, materialistic knowledge
compared with what will be known in the future about the
spiritual reality behind the physical, than we are justified in
saying that the scientific knowledge possessed by the Greeks
was puerile, that they were mere children, whereas we have made
splendid progress! In philistinism we certainly have made
splendid progress and we shall have much more right to
criticise when we can speak with full knowledge of this battle
that is waging on the Earth for possession of man's being.

There are signs that a knowledge of these things must begin to
spread in our time. It is certainly true that what I have told
you today about the battle of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic
beings in the Cosmos for the being of man is still hidden from
the majority of people in the dark recesses of their inner
nature. But these battles are now beginning to send their waves
into that realm of existence of which men are clearly
conscious. And today, if we are not to lead a sleepy existence
in our civilization, we must know how to recognize the first
waves that beat in upon us from those regions of the spiritual
world which I have just characterized.

These two hosts — the Luciferic in the warmth and airy
element of the Earth, the Ahrimanic in the solid and watery
— these two hosts send their waves into our cultural life
today. The Luciferic hosts are making their influence felt
above all in outworn theology. In our cultural life, as an
outflow of this Luciferic power, we encounter statements
endeavoring to make Christ into a myth. The Christ descended to
the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha as a real Being, and
that is naturally a truth that cuts right across the intentions
of the beings who would like to make man into a moral
automaton, without freedom. Therefore: Do away with the reality
of Christ. Christ is a myth! You can discover in the literature
of the 19th century, how clever and ingenious were the
hypotheses of theologians like David Frederic Strauss, Kalthoff
and those who merely echoed them, or better said, apish
babblers like Arthur Drews! Everywhere the view is advanced
that Christ is a mythological figure, a mere picture which has
impressed itself upon man's imagination. — There will be
many more attacks from these hosts — but this is the
first.

The
first waves coming from the Ahrimanic host in the solid and
watery elements of the Earth press home the opposite view. In
this case, Christ is denied and validity allowed only to the
‘simple man of Nazareth,’ to Jesus as the physical personality.
Here again is a tit-bit presented by theology!

Making Christ into a myth — a purely Luciferic activity.
Making the One who went through the Mystery of Golgotha into a
mere man — even if endowed with every possible quality
— a purely Ahrimanic activity. This, however, does not
succeed at all easily, for the many testimonies and traditions
have to be eliminated before producing this ‘simple man of
Nazareth.’ Nevertheless this other tit-bit of theology is
evidence of the onrush of the Ahrimanic breakers into human
culture.

If
these things are to be rightly assessed we must be able also to
detect them behind the scenes of our ordinary existence on
Earth. Otherwise, if men are not willing to turn their
attention to what can be said today out of the spiritual world,
they will become less and less able to judge such phenomena
correctly, and these phenomena will then take effect in the
sub-consciousness. It will become increasingly dangerous for
men to surrender to the subconscious. Clear, thoughtful
observation of what actually exists — a feeling for
reality — that is the growing need of humanity.

Perhaps we can trace most definitely where this clear
thoughtfulness, this sense of reality, must be applied, when we
perceive the increase of such extraordinary phenomena as the
theology which on the one hand denies Christ, and on the other
hand makes Christ a myth. Such phenomena will become more and
more prevalent, and if they are not to lead to corruption,
humanity must acquire a clear, unswerving perception of the
spiritual influences that are exercised upon the physical
world, and particularly upon man himself.

I
told you once before of the two men who found a piece of iron
bent into a certain shape. The one said: “A good
horse-shoe! I will shoe my horse with it.” The other
said: “Not at all. It is a magnet and can be used for
quite different purposes than shoeing a horse!” “I
see nothing like a magnet about it,” said the other man.
“You are crazy to say that there are invisible magnetic
forces in it. It's a horse-shoe — that's its
use!”

This is rather like the people today who are not willing to
receive the knowledge that comes from the spiritual world. They
want to “shoe horses” with everything in the world
— if I may so express myself — because they will
not acknowledge the reality of the supersensible forces. They
want to shoe horses — not to make anything in which the
magnetic forces are put to use. There was once a time —
nor does it lie very far behind us — when a piece of iron
so shaped would have been used for the shoeing of horses. But
today this is no longer possible.

A
time will come when in ordinary social life too, men will need
what can be communicated from the spiritual world. Of this we
must be mindful, and then Anthroposophy will penetrate not only
into the intellect — that is of less importance —
but above all into the will — and that is of great
importance. Upon this we will ponder more and more deeply.

* Printed under the title:
Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion. An abbreviated
version of ten lectures given by Dr. Steiner in Dornach,
6th-15th September, 1922.